User:Tom Morris/How to edit Wikipedia

This is in two parts: one for non-geeks and another for geeks. The latter is basically to help you set up editing in stuff like Vim, Emacs and so on.

Non-geeks

 * See Help:Contents.

Learn to write the MediaWiki text format
Wikipedia is written in the MediaWiki text markup language. Understanding the basics of how the markup language works is essential.

See Help:Wiki markup for details.

If you want, you can print out the Cheatsheet.

If you want to experiment with the markup, try the Sandbox.

Geeks
You probably want to do most of the following:


 * 1) Set up a Wikipedia account. Although you can edit without an account, there are benefits to having an account. See WP:WHY. You need to be registered to create new pages, upload images and a bunch of other stuff.
 * 2) Get autoconfirmed. Click the link in the e-mail confirmation. You also need to have 10 edits and to have used the site for 4 days.
 * 3) Set up your preferences:
 * 4) * Set up a custom signature. I use this to add an en-dash (—) before my name. You can do this in My Preferences » User profile.
 * 5) * If you are a bit anal about date formats, you can set this in My Preferences » Date and time. You can also set your time zone in there.
 * 6) Next, set up editing gadgets in My Preferences » Gadgets.
 * 7) * Navigation popups: makes it so you can easily see some information by hovering over article links. This is quite useful, and saves you from having a zillion tabs open.
 * 8) * Supress display of the fundraising banner: this is a pretty good solution to not seeing Jimmy Wales' face, but it has to be enabled on every Wikimedia language or sister project site you visit. I've got accounts on 54 Wikimedia project sites, some of which are in languages I don't speak very well. Finding out what the Swedish is for "stop showing me Jimmy's face" isn't the easiest thing to do. Jimmy Wales' Face Eradicator is a Greasemonkey script I've written which gets rid of the fundraising banner everywhere. Of course, you should go and donate to the Wikimedia Foundation before installing it. ;-)
 * 9) * Friendly: this is a little Ajax plugin thing which lets you easily welcome new users to Wikipedia.
 * 10) * Twinkle: this is the evil sister to Friendly. It's for deleting stuff, warning people and other counter-vandalism stuff.
 * 11) * HotCat: this makes editing categories on Wikipedia articles a lot easier. Turn this on!
 * 12) * ProveIt/Reftools: makes adding references to articles easier.
 * 13) Poke through the rest of the gadgets and see if there's anything else you'd prefer having switched on.
 * 14) Some people like using wikEd, which is available under gadgets: it basically gives you a slightly nicer text editor in the browser with a lot of advanced functions like regexes, syntax highlting and so on. But, if you are a geek, you probably have a text editor preference. So, let's do that.

Text editor support
Why edit in a browser when you can edit in a real text editor? Wouldn't it be awesome to edit Wikipedia in Vim? Damn straight.

First, get a nice editing mode for your text editor:
 * Vim: install Wikipedia.vim
 * Emacs: install Wikpedia-mode.el
 * SubEthaEdit: install the Wikipedia mode

Next, set your browser up to talk to your editor.

Firefox users: install It's All Text

Chrome users: install Edit with Emacs. Yes, even if you don't use Emacs. It works with any text editor, but it's just set by default to use Emacs. To do this, there are two plugins, one for Emacs written in EmacsLisp. If you are using Emacs, do that. If not, use pycl.py - be sure to use the one in the Git repository. You'll have to edit the script to use your favourite editor (Vim, right? If you are using a GUI editor, you'll need to invoke it in such a way that it only returns when you've finished. Check the man page for gvim and MacVim: there are ways).

In both browsers, you should now be able to click a button to edit Wikipedia in your text editor.